Busy week of sewing

Every night this week (except last night) I have been working on this, for the Quilts Down Under Blankets of Love competition. I have spent so much time trying to line the seams up and they still don't match up so I'm not happy and am putting it down for a day or two as it isn't enjoyable to sew when it doesn't work out how I want things. I know it's not got a chance in the comp as it's only my second/third quilt ever (not counting the handpieced and hand quilted thing I made for Nanna's wall that she'd love to destroy and use as a practice piece!). The first quilt was Austy's star quilt (to puke all over and roll about on the floor on before he knew what arms and legs were for) which nearly didn't get finished for the same reasaons I'm hating my BOL attempt. Why is it, that no matter how much effort I put in, it still comes out mis-shapen and skewiff???? Austy's big boy quilt was started second but will be finished third as I wanted to learn some things from this BOL quilt first. What have I learned? Probably that three quilts will be all I will ever make. Okay no, seriously. I have learned that I am opening up the seam allowances and pressing when they should be pressed closed and to the lighter fabric so they nestle into each other. Also that I have done things the hard way (surprise, surprise) and should have started with all my pieces as squares not cut the triangles out individually until AFTER they were stitched together. And finally that when I do Austy's quilt, and am sewing the triangles to the squares, I should use the square's edge as the guide because the triangle edge is on the bias and all set to wreak havoc and be mean to me. Trust the squares!

Rant over. Not thinking about quilts until another day. I'm obviously not meant to be a quilter and in much envy of those that can pull it off!!!

On the knitting side, I haven't done much at all - I was locking myself in the study/sewing room all night battling with pins and triangles. BUT I did make a start on the ITE IV tote last night. I was going to work on it some more this afternoon but Austin had other ideas. Obviously we wore him out TOO much and he turned into the hyper monster and refused to go to sleep. Please come quickly grobag order! He is still in his 6-18m sized sleeping bags and unzipped his bag and proceeded to nudey up about three times this afternoon while I persisted with trying to get him to have a nap. I gave up after the nappy came off and declared it an "early to bed" night instead. The new bags will supposedly fix the problem as they have a snap stud flap over the zip tag so it's harder to open. Oooh I hope so. We were going to just get him to sleep under blankets instead of buying big bags but we tried a couple of times and decided that the middle of winter is not the time to wean him off bags and under covers. The last time I tried it, I went in every half hour and had to move him to get him covered. Then I ended up putting him in a bag when he woke up cold and coughing.

Off to do some CLOTHING cutting out (and maybe sewing) - I can actually do that so it might make me feel better.